


Autumn Deep

by Quixcy



Category: An Enchantment of Ravens
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-03
Updated: 2019-01-03
Packaged: 2019-10-03 06:41:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 448
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17278997
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quixcy/pseuds/Quixcy
Summary: He watches her. Studies her. Like a prison guard studies their charge. For weaknesses, or the like. Trying to puzzle out how she could draw him—him—not just the dazzling part of him he allows the world to see, but something—someone?—deeper.





	Autumn Deep

**Author's Note:**

> This is a short drabble of Rook's ~feelings~ in An Enchantment of Ravens by Margaret Rogerson. (IF YOU HAVEN'T READ THIS BOOK GO AND READ THIS BOOK PLS.)

Rook sits back on his feet and watches her cook by the campfire. She rotates the rabbit slowly over the spit, humming quietly to herself, so patient and steadfast he almost marvels at her. Almost. But it isn’t marveling. It is simply… _watching._

He watches her. Studies her. Like a prison guard studies their charge. For weaknesses, or the like. Trying to puzzle out how she could draw him— _him_ —not just the dazzling part of him he allows the world to see, but something—someone?—deeper.

She is a mere human girl with a talent too dangerous for her own good, and so he watches her, and studies her, and tries not to think about what his brothers will do when he drags her to their court.

At least, that’s what he tells himself.

It’s taking an achingly long time for her to cook, when he’d caught the rabbit in a matter of moments. Maybe he should have made it seem a more arduous task. Maybe he should not have shown off. Maybe he should have been patient and taken his time, like how she takes her time as she carefully turns the rabbit over the fire. The skin is crisp and crackly. She made mention of preserving the fur—they _are_ in the Autumnlands, and it gets quite chilly at night—but then she frowned and said she wasn’t all that particular at sewing.

“Perhaps you should have taken that up instead,” he says, more to himself than to her.

She glances up from the fire, blinking. Her eyes are wide, but they are guarded. She doesn’t trust him—of course she doesn’t. He dragged her away from her home to sit trial and face certain death.

 _She deserves it_ , he tells himself.

For painting what he did not want the world to see.

She asks, “Did you say something?”

He glances away. “No.”

Then he stands, looking at the spit again—remembering how she had almost killed him the last time she cooked—

“It’s almost done,” she says, and he waves his hand dismissively toward her, as if to tell her _go ahead_ without him, and stalks out through the wall of trees he had created with his blood, and into the wood.

He cannot stand being near her.

But… he does not wander far.

He does not know why, not really. He can make excuses—because she is weak. Because he needs her alive. Because they are being hunted.

Because the Autumnlands are dangerous, and so is he.

But the truth is buried somewhere much deeper, in some place underneath his wound from the Barrowlord, festering there like maggots, too infected to tear free. 


End file.
